“Ever dreamed of owning a car that offers complete peace of mind with full awareness of its surroundings?” That slightly unsettling praise comes from Peugeot, referring to its own Instinct plug-in-hybrid concept car, which is headed for a Geneva auto show debut in March. Besides implying sentience on the part of the Instinct—after all, the thing’s name is “Instinct”—Peugeot also suggests that the concept car is the cure for many ills. Do you seek a vehicle that “understands you, that knows you so well that it can foresee your every wish”? We’d be lucky to find a partner so in tune with our senses.

The awareness that the automaker refers to can be boiled down to its combination of self-driving hardware and its integration into the Internet of Things cloud ecosystem. Self-driving concept cars are in vogue, as are connected cars that do things such as turning on the smart lights in your home as you approach. The Instinct can do both, thanks both to sensors and cameras fitted to its headlights and Samsung’s Artik cloud ecosystem. The car also can determine if the driver is tired or in a mood to relax and switch itself to autonomous mode. In such a case, the steering wheel folds itself into the dashboard and the pedals retract into the footwell. More novel are the driving modes Peugeot cooked up for the self-driving feature, with both Soft and Sharp settings. Guess which one is more likely to make occupants carsick?

Via a 9.7-inch touchscreen on the center console, the driver may choose between the modes and can even direct the Instinct to pass other traffic. Its holographic display can show information regarding speed and battery level as well as distance and time-to-destination countdowns. As Peugeot points out, “With the driver now able to relax” in autonomous mode, “time is the only notion that really counts!”

Outwardly, the Instinct still resembles a car, albeit an appropriately strange French one. Peugeot packs plenty of strangeness into the Instinct’s compact shooting-brake body, even adorning the door panels with (thin) concrete trim. The grille appears different when viewed from different angles, and the headlights and an aerodynamic band stretching between them expand at speeds above 55 mph (this also opens up slots in the grille for better airflow over the body). There are a few normal features, too, including four wheels, a pair of selectable drive modes—Boost and Relax—for when the driver is doing the driving, and a 300-hp plug-in-hybrid powertrain.

Now sit back, relax, and wait for self-driving cars to become a thing—and hope their only “instincts” pertain to avoiding accidents and don’t extend to subjugating the human race.